Baz Luhrmann used Samsung devices in making of The Great Gatsby

Samsung devices are more advanced than ‘the other cult’, says Luhrmann. Photo: Samsung

Hollywood director and Samsung ambassador says he ‘genuinely values them as tools to help his creative process’

Australian film director Baz Luhrmann, whose credits include such Hollywood blockbusters as Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!, has revealed that while shooting his latest film, The Great Gatsby, he used Samsung tablets and smartphones on the set.

For those that don’t know, Luhrmann has been involved in a long-term partnership with the South Korean manufacturer as one of the brand’s global ‘passion ambassadors’.

But Luhrmann insists that he uses Samsung products “because he genuinely values them as tools to help his creative process,” he told the Brisbane Times.

”I think their products are actually more advanced than ‘the other cult’,” he told the paper.

Could he possibly mean Apple and be referring to the iPhone and iPad?

While filming The Great Gatsby, Luhrmann says he used Samsung’s mobile devices to create storyboard frames, scout locations and write scripts with videos embedded on each page.

One of the biggest advantages, the director told the paper, was being able to collaborate with the other people on his creative team in real time.

”I can work on an image on my device, and the six people on my team can see me working on that image on their devices. When they work on it, those changes share back to my device instantly.”

Group Play, unique to certain models of Samsung Galaxy devices, can be used as a key part of the filmmaking process, as it enables users to collaborate on photos and documents and other media with up to 10 other Samsung smartphones and tablets over a wireless connection.

I Am Number Four director DJ Caruso also told Hollywood film entertainment website Cambio how Apple’s iPad worked its way into the movie making process.

“I got it, I don’t want to say as a toy, but then I realised about a week into prep that my storyboards were coming on it, my previs was on it, my script was on it, I don’t carry my script anymore. I started getting emails from two of my storyboard artists who work in Los Angeles and I have this application where I can mark up the boards – I’m a terrible drawer –- and I can mark up the boards and send them back. It just became this amazing production tool,” he told Cambio.

And it’s not just Apple and Samsung devices that are being adopted by filmmakers: the Nokia Lumia 920 was used by Jason van Genderen, another Australian filmmaker, to shoot his latest award-winning short film, Red Earth Hip Hop, which was previewed in London at the Sundance Film and Music Festival earlier this year.

”Filming on a smartphone is such an unobtrusive way to capture a story,” he says. ”People find they open up a lot more in a documentary sense talking to a device that they are used to seeing every day as opposed to a big film crew,” he told the Brisbane Times.

”Such incredibly sharp pictures from such a tiny lens. For most audiences, they’d have no idea it came from a smartphone.”

With the likes of Baz Luhrmann and DJ Caruso, along with many other respected directors, it is clear that mobile devices are becoming standard in the production and creative process of filmmaking.